RRC Archives

GWG wrote:I've seen the ones that have the little screws on instead of the prongs. Has anyone used those? From what I've heard about them, they are more time consuming to put in but then they are in for good. Virtually no stripping out.

I worked at a wall built by Eldorado that used those in OSB (oriented strand board). There was a serious problem with tearout. Once the screws stripped out, the wood in the area of the hole was typically too torn up to screw them back in. We would pull the T-nut and put in a pronged replacement, but it wasn't ideal. I suspect that by putting the screws into plywood, they would work better.

I guess that the ideal would be to use the screw-based T-nuts in plywood and set them with something like Gorilla Glue that will bond both metal and wood. But that would be REALLY time consuming.

I've purchased T-nuts from www.stafast.com . They make a wide variety of doo-dads, including a bunch of different types of t-nuts. I bought their zinc-plated 4-prong t-nuts and at the time they were $90.05 for 1000. You can call them at 1-800-782-3278

Since you're entering into the weird world of hardware, you'll need to ask for "t-nuts for 3/8" bolts with 16 threads per inch (tpi) and a roughly 7/16" barrel length" because there are all varieties of t-nuts out there.

They aren't set up for normal "web store" ordering from their site, but they can take credit cards over the phone and usually ship same day. They also sell the three prong type. These aren't cheap, but they have really good plating if you're building an outdoor wall. As you get into cheaper and cheaper hardware, the quality control can go downhill, so you may need to order a bunch extra to cover the throw-aways.

tomdarch wrote:I guess that the ideal would be to use the screw-based T-nuts in plywood and set them with something like Gorilla Glue that will bond both metal and wood. But that would be REALLY time consuming.

We used liquid nails when installing the 4 prong T-nuts on Don's wall as far as I know only one pulled out, out of about 800.